


‘He’ll be giving Fell the padlock, next!’

by Crowgirl, Jaydeun



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Historical, Historical Figures, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 19:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20363626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydeun/pseuds/Jaydeun
Summary: Crowley makes the Turk’s Head his last stop because, honestly, Johnson needs alcohol like a fire needs oxygen -- but not tonight, apparently, because the great room is damn near empty.





	‘He’ll be giving Fell the padlock, next!’

Crowley makes the Turk’s Head his last stop because, honestly, Johnson needs alcohol like a fire needs oxygen -- but not tonight, apparently, because the great room is damn near empty.

Crowley swears half-heartedly and collapses into a chair near the hearth. One of the serving women -- Molly? Polly? Lolly? Perhaps Dolly-- brings him a pot of beer and he fumbles coins out of his pocket. 

This is the second -- third? -- time he’s chased over half London looking for that angel and his latest bloody obsession. What is it this time? Definitions and derivations -- as if Aziraphale didn’t have enough words in his bookshop, he needs to go and get _more._

‘Oh, it’s you.’

No one had named Crowley specifically, but the _you_ has a distinct directional quality and a measured dose of extreme dislike. Crowley slides one arm over the back of the chair and gives his head a half-turn. At the rough-hewn bar sits a thin, waspish gentleman with too much leg for his own good and very fancy stockings on them. Rake. You could tell by the cut of his coat and the sicklebone jaw.

‘Mmh. Know me, do you?’ Crowley asks. There _was_ something slightly familiar in the man. Like he came as part of a set, and wasn’t recognizable without the other piece. The man stands up--very unsteadily--and motions for Molly-or-Polly to follow him with a full tankard. She does so and deposits the pot on the table between them.

‘We must take our friends as they are,’ the man sighs, falling into the second hearth chair and squinting down a hawk nose at Crowley. ‘Boswell. And you’re the--other one. That friend of Mr. Fell.’

James Boswell. Crowley frowns over suddenly sharp teeth. _Johnson’s_ Boswell. And he’d just spoken Aziraphale’s name like the venom came standard. It appeared he’d have somewhere to put his demonic tendencies to work after all.

‘And you’re that friend of Johnson.’ 

Boswell draws himself up momentarily. ‘Yes, yes, I am.’ Then he sighs again and stretches his feet out towards the fire. ‘Inasmuch as he has any friends, that is.’

Crowley takes a sip of his ale and does not make a face at the flavor. No wonder Aziraphale loves coming here: bitter has always been his favorite. ‘I thought I might find them here.’

‘As did I.’ Boswell cradles his tankard and props one booted foot on the fire screen, denting in the light iron. Crowley frowns and reinforces the metal with a thought; he doesn’t mind making Boswell’s evening a little worse, but making the maid’s morning a little worse is not his intent. ‘I think they might have gone to Thrale’s.’

‘Ah.’ Crowley represses his own sigh. He’s definitely not welcome there after his wrangle with Thrale over the wisdom of pushing his wife to have more children versus simply leaving his business to one of his daughters. So his odds of finding Aziraphale any time in the next few days just halved. Again. 

Boswell takes a long drink of beer and looks sideways at Crowley. ‘How long have you been Fell’s friend?’

‘Many years. You Johnson’s?’

‘It will never be long enough.’ Boswell returns his gaze to the fire.

Crowley ponders this a moment. But Boswell, clearly not one to waste a silence, continued on.

‘I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.’ He raises one hand to his chest and flourishes the other like he’d just stepped straight out of _Tristram Shandy._

_For Satan’s sake,_ Crowley thinks, _he’s almost as in love with himself as he is with Johnson._ His hand twitches and he almost spills ale: in love with Johnson? Oh, that was good, wasn’t it?

‘Tsk. Seems a shame you can’t keep his company. I suppose he tires of you now and then,’ Crowley murmurs conversationally. A dart of scarlet rises in Boswell’s cheeks.

‘Well if you hadn’t lost _your_ friend, I’m sure I could keep _mine.’_

Crowley’s temperature doubles on the spot and his mouth doesn’t seem large enough for the crowding of additional teeth. He swallows the urge to bite: _Just piss in the wind, why don’t you,_ he mutters to himself. That doesn’t get Boswell off the hook in the slightest, however. Quite the reverse. Crowley signals for the bar maid.

‘Drink to it, then,’ Crowley encourages upon refill. ‘You’re the clever biographer. You don’t have a bit of unworthy script to pry Mr. Fell off the Good Doctor?’

Boswell gives him a disgusted look. ‘What do you think me!’

Crowley shrugs. ‘A man who misses his .. friend.’ He balances the pause and the emphasis on friend just about perfectly, he thinks, and the color rises in Boswell’s cheeks.

‘...indeed,’ Boswell says finally, attempting a frost but Crowley invented the frosty silence and this one is beginner’s work.

‘I suppose it was inevitable, really,’ Crowley goes on, slouching down in his chair and arranging his legs in a fashion he knows shows off his calves. ‘That our two friends would find each other. Fell’s a bloodhound for books.’

Boswell snorts. ‘He can’t be as bad as Johnson.’

‘Care to place a wager?’

Boswell leans forward. ‘Johnson once missed an entire dinner party because he arrived early and found an uncut volume of _The Castle of Otranto_ on the hall table.’ 

Crowley sniffs and rubs a thoughtful finger around the rim of his tankard. ‘Then they’ll have plenty to talk about. Fell helped edit that.’

Boswell gapes and Crowley times exactly how long it takes for him to remember to shut his mouth and swallow. It’s a good thirty seconds and not a pleasant sight.

‘He did not--he couldn’t,’ Boswell pants. ‘Walpole’s _Otranto?_ Mr. _Fell?’_

‘I should think the ending was all his work,’ Crowley says, hiding a sly grin. It was wonderful when the truth actually did more damage than a lie. Boswell slams the tankard down on the nearest flat surface. 

‘Damn him, then,’ he growls.

‘Tried, doesn’t work,’ Crowley shifts forward, letting the top of his left foot slide gently down the back of his right calf.. ‘And that’s to say nothing about Eliza Haywood’s work.’

‘Haywood! Stuff and nonsense--a woman who writes is like a dog on two legs!’ Boswell delivers the maxim without its punchline: _done poorly and surprising if done at all._ It wasn’t as though Crowley hadn’t been keeping up on Johnson’s output. 

‘You steal that from Johnson, or he from you?’ he asks. It was bad enough to belong to either. And clearly Boswell never met Haywood. Any woman who could write _Betsy Thoughtless_ and pretend it was a moral tale--with nary a blush--was worth knowing. Crowley wasn’t sure what side of Hell she landed on, but he assumed she’d make great friends with Beelzebub or Gabriel, either one.

Boswell hadn’t answered. He was still glowering at the fire, legs spread out in a pretty good imitation of Crowley. 

‘It’s bad enough competing with Hester Thrale all the time.’ He sinks a little further in the chair, but not being owner of Crowley’s spine, his posture loses all style and grace. ‘You know about the shackles? Blasted things; he keeps ‘em but she’s got the keys.’

Crowley manifests the most unpitying boredom, which deserves hell’s employee of the month for the effort it takes. Disinterested. Unconcerned. His index finger makes a small circle against the wood of the chair arm.

‘Shackles, you say?’ he asks innocently.

‘Worse than Garrick’s wretched sluts,’ Boswell mutters gloomily. ‘Amorous propensities, indeed.’ 

‘Not a fan of Peg, I take it?’ Crowley asks. ‘I thought she spoke Johnson’s prologue rather well.’

‘Oh, yes, and--’ Boswell visibly bites his tongue and yells, ‘More ale!’ in the direction of the bar.

The maid brings two pints and Crowley slips her an extra coin because Boswell is too busy sulking dramatically to do anything as mundane as worry about payment. 

‘Thank y’, sir,’ she mutters, bobbing something he’s sure is meant as a curtsey and giving Boswell a cautious once-over. As she turns away, she watches him drain half the pint on the spot, then turns back to Crowley. ‘I’ll bring y’a pitcher, sir. It’ll be easier.’

‘It certainly will be,’ Crowley agrees, sliding his own pot discreetly in Boswell’s direction.

Boswell wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, stifles a belch, and says gloomily, ‘She must suck cock like a queen or Garrick’d not keep her.’ 

Crowley tries to work out if they are still talking about Hester Thrale. Boswell seems to take aim at almost any woman within spitting distance. ‘So, you’re fighting off Garrick and Thrale.’

_‘And_ whores,’ Boswell glugs. ‘And now _Fell._ Everyone but me. He’ll be giving Fell the padlock, next!’

Crowley processes this information. Padlock...and shackles. What exactly was this Johnson up to, anyway?

‘See,’ Boswell screws his eyes shut for a moment. ‘You have to understand the depth of--of--a genius like Johnson.’

Crowley stops himself from making a comment about the ‘depth’ of Will Shakespeare. And anyway, Boswell abhors a vacuum. He’ll go on unprompted, if Crowley is patient.

‘Man like that. Mind like that.’ Boswell’s eyes have gone watery. ‘You just can’t know when it happens. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. Everything about his character and manners is forcible and violent; there never was any moderation.’

Crowley is beginning to think he’d overshot the mark, that one mug of ale too many had just mucked up an otherwise reasonable attempt to get some real information. But Boswell rallies, fixing him with a stare both hungry and desperate (and very drunken).

‘He fears 'imself,’ Boswell says, the Scots bubbling into his voice. ‘Terrified of what he could do.’

‘Johnson. Samuel. Wig and jowl. Eyes don’t point in the same direction at the same time. _That’s_ who we’re talking about?’ Crowley was by no means certain. Boswell answers by arse-walking his chair closer, so close that his knees bang into Crowley’s own, and his bitter breath lathers the air between them.

_‘You_ don’t know ‘im. _I_ know ‘im. I know _best.’_ He drains the pot and refills it. ‘There’s a whole, a whole--’ Boswell waves his hands about. ‘Like the stars. Like that. But here.’ He taps his forehead. Crowley makes a noise in his throat, which sounds a lot like the suppression of a hearty laugh. 

‘A universe for a mind. How--unlikely,’ he says at last. ‘He needs chains for it, does he?’

‘That’s the very thing, sir,’ Boswell tries to pull his chair closer, but there wasn’t a way to do it without offending physics. He’d already offended against personal space. ‘He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. Said it all ‘imself. To her. And that’s why.’

The stench of the man is becoming intolerably hell-like. Crowley leans back and casts a weary eye toward Molly/Polly that she seems to understand.

‘That’s why _what?’_ he pursues. Boswell draws himself up, straightening his collar.

‘That’s why he had her lock him up, o’course. Keeping the beast down.’

Up to this point, Crowley had imagined this to be an inexpert and overly extended metaphor. And now… now he doesn’t think Boswell is sober enough to dissemble, and there’s no need to pretend he’s not interested. 

‘She--ties him up?’ he asks, and Boswell nods mournfully. Then sinks back into a pout.

‘I bet Addison has had a go at him, too,’ he mutters glumly. ‘And now your Mr. Fell.’

Crowley blinks. Then blinks again. Boswell doesn’t get any better to look at although he does have a more successful go at the pot of beer. Crowley miracles it full again almost absently, distracted by the inner vision of Aziraphale standing in the middle of the Thrales’ sitting room, well-dressed as always, neat and collected, entirely master of the situation -- with a key in his hands. A key that matches with shackles locked around-- No, no, no, far better not. Except his imagination is quick and operates without his consent and has already gotten there ahead of him and he has to resist the urge either to groan or rub at his eyes in an attempt to wipe out the image. 

‘This is the after-dinner entertainment, is it? They all stand around and watch Johnson wrestle with his...beast?’ Crowley can’t imagine Aziraphale standing that for longer than a minute -- except now he can, he _can,_ dammit, and now he’s never going to be able to get the image out of his head.

Boswell belches again and leans back in his chair. ‘I’ve no idea. Never been asked, have I.’

‘Then how do you--’

‘Told me.’ 

_‘Told_ you?’ That’s a step of refined torment worthy of Beelzebub at their worst. 

Boswell nods gloomily. ‘When I was telling him about...’ He makes a gesture which, while definitely rude, could mean almost anything and Crowley nods as though he understands. 

‘Suggested you try it, did he?’

Boswell nods again and Crowley sits on his imagination before it can get ahead of him. ‘Wouldn’t want to. Not -- mm. I mean. Not my...not my style.’

‘Not without your friend,’ Crowley says, landing heavily enough on the word ‘friend’ that even the thoroughly drunk should get the implication.

Boswell scowls and slams his beer pot down on the table between them. ‘And what about _your_ friend, eh? You like the idea of him...’ Boswell stammers himself to a halt and waves his hands.

Crowley shrugs -- it’s quite possibly the least disinterested shrug he has ever given but Boswell’s not to know that -- and leans back in his chair, linking his hands over his waistcoat. 

Boswell gives him a narrow-eyed look or what would be a narrow-eyed look if he were still capable of narrowing his eyes; it’s more of a lopsided squint. He leans forward and, before Crowley can dodge, drops a heavy hand on his ankle; Crowley resists the impulse to yank his foot back out of reach. He _had_ been trying to incite the man to lust, after all, and he does excellent work. ‘What did you want with ‘em this evening?’

Crowley does let himself glower at the hand upon his ankle, but this does not stop Boswell from scooting it up just enough to rest his fingers at the tendon beneath his calf. ‘We were talking about Johnson.’

‘Well, he isn’t here, is he? And we can’t go there. We can be company together.’ The fingers are inching upward. Crowley’s eyes narrow to slits behind his lenses; company? together? Not in this lifetime. He stands up sharply, the sudden flash of movement almost toppling Boswell out of his chair.

‘If it’s tying up you want, I’ve got a few choice addresses for you,’ Crowley says. ‘Or perhaps you know the houses already?’ Boswell’s interest hasn’t left, if the snug fit of his trousers were any indication, but he’d sense enough to know a rebuff. 

Boswell sneers. ‘You’ll shag a molly like Fell, but not a gentleman?’

Crowley has every intention of answering him exactly as he deserves -- except it suddenly isn’t necessary because a cascade of beer has just come down on top of Boswell’s head. It runs in rivers through his wig, making a disgusting paste of his excessive use of Frenched powder. 

‘Oh--dear me, sir, I never meant it!’ The bar maid says with an animated gasp. ‘I must surely ‘ave tripped on the rug!’

Boswell’s drunken leer turns into a glower that looks nonetheless ridiculous under a slither of violet-scented powder mixed with bitter. ‘You clumsy---’

Tripping him as he tries to get up is really far too easy; Crowley itches to do something worse but leaving him unconscious in an uncomfortable armchair far too close to a good fire will have to do. Crowley notes as he slides himself out of his chair that the barmaid must have done very well to trip on the rug since the nearest one is six feet away. ‘Sorry about that.’ He dumps a handful of assorted change in the empty beerpot.

She gives him a surprised look and glances at the coins. ‘Oh, sir, you needn’t -- really --’

‘The pleasure was in the doing, I suspect,’ Crowley says, ‘but you shouldn’t be out of pocket for it.’ 

* * *

He goes past the bookshop one more time on his way home -- it’s just as awkward to walk via that street as it is any other given where he started out. It’s gotten late while he had his unpleasant tête à tête and there’s a heavy fog that’s going to turn into a damp drizzle by morning and that’s only a few hours off. He shrugs deeper into his coat, tries to pretend he can’t feel the water starting to drip off the ends of his hair and down the back of his neck, and curses himself for getting so caught up in finding the damned angel that he wasted a perfectly good evening drinking beer he hates with a man he loathes. 

But the little window above Aziraphale’s desk in the back room is glowing golden when he reaches the corner and Crowley knocks before he realises fully what he’s doing.

There’s a moment of silence and then a shuffling noise and the clink of the lock. ‘Oh! Dear boy, you don’t usually knock. Is something the matter?’

Crowley stands in the doorway, wet, and feeling more or less confused by his own actions. A stream of water slides from his collar down the back of his poplin shirt, and he winces.

‘I, uh, thought you were at Thrale’s.’

‘Oh--well, yes. For a bit; good gracious, do come in; you’re sodden!’ Aziraphale backs up and sweeps his hand toward the bookshop’s dim interior. It seems a rather ostentatious welcome, but then Crowley feels the warmth ripple from crown to toes. He’s just been miracled dry.

‘Didn’t want me puddling the rugs, I suppose,’ he mutters to himself as the tremulous sensation wanes. Aziraphale purses his mouth and gives a non-committal wriggle. 

‘Corporations need looking after, my boy; what on earth were you doing? It’s not like you to stay up all night in the cold and damp?’ Aziraphale walks them both back towards his desk as he talks. Crowley hasn’t been invited to stay, quite, but there was a rather plush looking armchair nearby. He inches his way towards it, but tries very hard to look as though he’s doing no such thing.

‘I thought Johnson liked a pub in the evening. That you’d have, eh, found one. After.’ He clears his throat, because it had gone rather dry. ‘After leaving Mrs. Thrale’s.’ His imagination hadn’t forgiven him for his earlier attempts at squashing visualization, and was now running a high speed Johnsonian burlesque in the background. Ngk. ‘When did you get back?’

‘Oh goodness, Crowley, I’ve been here since well before supper!’ Aziraphale waves one hand proudly at a considerable volume on the display stand. ‘First edition of the Dictionary, and signed! Imagine! Forty-two thousand words! And just look at this one--’ He traces a finger down the page lovingly. ‘Backfriend. A friend backwards! An enemy in secret!’ He practically shivers with delight. Crowley is still processing that he’d been there in the shop all night. Now he has to contend with Aziraphale’s positive beaming over--over whatever he’d just said.

‘A back... friend?’

‘Right! I thought of you. Well, no--oh, heavens. Not exactly. You would have to be a backenemy, I think? a friend in secret?’

Crowley sits in the chair. He’s not been making it a secret, for hell’s sake. He’s been pretty fucking obvious, one would have thought. 

‘So no padlocks and shackles, then,’ he says. ‘With Dr. Johnson?’

Aziraphale had been about to launch into another ridiculous definition but his expression freezes. His eyebrows inch up into his hairline. _He’s going to deny it,_ Crowley thinks. Not a lie, no, of course not, but some version of truth sliced thin and transparent. Aziraphale flutters his fingers against his waistcoat.

‘How--that is, how would you know about that?’ 

‘Boswell.’ 

‘I--see.’ Aziraphale makes a great show of looking closely at the Dictionary’s stitched spine. ‘The two of you are friends, then?’

For the umpteenth time that evening, the word _friend_ seems to take on extra syllables. Only now it’s enough to make Crowley’s stomach turn over in disgust.

‘You’re serious? Bloody gibbet never shuts up. Piss-poor manners, can’t deliver an oration to save his soul--and you know I’m to be trusted about that. Satan knows what Johnson sees in him.’

‘You don’t like him, then?’ Aziraphale asks. Crowley blinks at him slowly.

‘No, angel, I don’t like him.’ 

Aziraphale unfreezes.

‘Oh! Oh, jolly good. Yes. Well,’ he hums to himself with what might almost be...relief? That’s odd, surely, but Crowley shelves it to think about later. The important thing is that Aziraphale hasn’t been off frolicking with Johnson’s beast. ‘He isn’t very likable, I suppose. Johnson has certainly never asked Boswell to, um, join in at Thrale’s.’

Crowley lifts himself just slightly to the arm of the chair, to be more in Aziraphale’s direct line of sight.

‘And were _you_ invited, angel?’ he asks, and damned if his voice didn’t come out almost an octave higher than it ought to have done. Aziraphale turns one ankle, a flash of marvelous calf tastefully robed in silk hose.

‘Well. Yes. But it’s not my type of thing, really, is it?’ he asks. ‘I’m flattered. Of course. But--well. Literary men and their habits.’

Crowley notes with relish that the slideshow in his head has switched to images of Boswell being trussed up by Hastur. That’s _much_ more enjoyable. 

‘Like Shakespeare, you mean?’ he asks, arching one eyebrow. Aziraphale blushes, a lovely rose hue that spread downward to disappear beneath his cravat. 

‘You always bring him up,’ he tuts, but his eyes are still merry. ‘I know it’s an odd hour--but can I interest you in a good wine?’

Crowley pulls off and pockets his glasses. Then he gives Aziraphale one of his rarest smiles (one he’d not admit was positively brimming with relief).

‘You always do,’ he says.

**Author's Note:**

> From Crowgirl:
> 
> This is what happens when you get two fandom-inclined historians together over chat. I now _desperately_ want to do one where Giraldus Cambrensis has a crush on Aziraphale and his historically infamous hatred of the Irish comes from a misunderstanding of Crowley's accent.
> 
> For more on:  
["Peg" and David Garrick](http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/garrick001.html)  
[Samuel Johnson and James Boswell](https://www.vqronline.org/history/james-boswell-and-samuel-johnson-original-odd-couple)  
[Boswell's Life of Johnson](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1564?msg=welcome_stranger)  
[Eliza Haywood](http://virginia-anthology.org/eliza-haywood/)
> 
> From Jaydeun:  
And here I thought getting a degree in 18th century literature would never come in handy. This fiction springs from one of the most pleasant email exchanges among friends I have ever had.


End file.
